Fall Festival and Bingo's Return

There's been some drama this week with Update 21.2. This update includes two new Mordor dungeons, new max level gear, a new improved Mount Collection interface, new filtering options for quests and items, removal of the crafting quest required to unlock Artisan crafting, and many other fixes and quality of life changes.

The drama is about the new max level gear having the wrong price and/or stats. This is being fixed, but some players are not happy with how it has been handled. Standing Stone Games decided to offer everyone 50 Mithril Coins per account by redeeming the code MORDORMITHRIL at the LOTRO Store before October 22.

The Harvestmath/Fall Festival has arrived with some nice new goodies. The Autumn Leafmail armour set (hauberk or dress, shoulders, shield and a hooded or unhooded cloak) and the new steed look great and matches the outfit too with the pale golden leaf theme.

Autumn Leafmail Dress and Cloak

Steed of the Eldar Autumn

Bingo Boffin makes a return with an interesting new spooky quest-line! I hope there is a follow-up - it left me curious to know more about the Spectral Vision's threat.

Bingo Boffin telling tales around the campfire

My Burglar got the Steed of Gloaming Autumn and I'm impressed - at night its eyes and the pattern on the blanket glow orange, which looks awesome. Only 30 Fall Festival tokens too!

Steed of the Gloaming Autumn

Steed of the Gloaming Autumn (glows in the dark!)

I'm very happy about the new improved Mounts Collection interface. Finally we can see all the mounts available, preview what they look like and find out how to get them in-game.

Updated Mounts Collection interface

There seem to have been quite a few crafting changes, particularly for Doomfold crafting, such as making daily crafting recipes available to more professions that use those materials, increasing stack-sizes for food, reducing the amount of daily-gated materials needed for jewellery, and making Doomfold materials drop from some Mordor mobs and items that were previously giving Anórien materials. Removing the quest for unlocking Artisan crafting will eliminate a roadblock for many new players who get Expert Proficiency then don't understand why they can't progress any more. While I'd like to see more crafting quests, I think they should be optional and perhaps reward rare recipes for cosmetic skins or "flavour" items that are not essential but are fun to collect.

Apart from the new gear drama, I think there's a lot of good stuff in this update. I especially liked seeing Bingo return for the festival - it's like catching up with an old friend.

Walked into Mordor

The Black Gate is open!

Hooray! The Mordor expansion is here!

I bought the Collector's Edition - I wanted a special mount and the high elf, and the extras in the Ultimate Fan Bundle would be nice, but too expensive.

Steed of the Alliance of the Third Age

Alliance of the Third Age cosmetic armour

So far, Myndariel my Lore-master, Tyravorth my Beorning and Letycia my Captain (who used the Aria of the Valar to get boosted to 105) have entered Gorgoroth and are questing in Udûn. I've also created a new High Elf champion.

Mordor First Impressions

Session play was used quite well to show us key moments in the final stage of Frodo's journey, especially Gollum with Shelob and the battle between Gollum and Frodo for the ring. The Field of Cormallen looked stunning in glorious colours. Radanir was funny with his speech about an important to decision to make (which inn will the Rangers meet at for drinks?).

Gollum and the Ring

Field of Cormallen

Walking into Mordor (yes I did originally try walking into Mordor from The Wastes - not recommended - you'll die!) by taking the horse from the Field of Cormallen to the Black Gate, it's dark, but not as bad as I expected. I like the purple shadows around the player when they leave the beaten track; they emphasise the sense of potential danger. The soot-smudged pages to find and audio lore excerpts are nice - if I could be patient enough to stand still and listen to them fully. I read them though. Briefly. Then rush off to explore some more. So much to see and do.

The introduction of new NPCs with their own goals in Mordor is interesting and I look forward to journeying alongside them and seeing what mischief they get up to. I love crafting so I'm happy to see new resources and recipes and less reliance on essences. I'll have to wait and see whether the disenchantment system (breaking down unwanted gear into Ash of Gorgoroth) is good - will we get enough excess gear drops? Other than quest rewards, I've only had one piece of gear drop in the wild and I can't wait to use it (it's for level 107). I've found lots of chests that apparently contain Gorgoroth Crafting Bundles - but you need level 106 to open them. I hope they will be worthwhile.

Udûn

The mobs have been difficult because my characters aren't that well geared. Myndariel has had the easiest time so far, but the mobs still take a while to defeat. I feel like I'm hitting them with wet noodles and they avoid so many of my attacks. Once I get new gear with the stats balanced appropriate for the zone I'm sure it will get better.

So far I'm enjoying it. It's tough but it should be. I'm looking forward to new gear and exploring new regions and learning more about the allegiance system and the Black Book of Mordor.

High Elf

Taurileth in the Second Age

I created a High Elf champion and played through the starting area. After having just been through the finale of the War of the Ring on Myndariel and Tyravorth, it gave me goosebumps and that déjà-vu feeling playing through the High Elf intro set in the Second Age during the last battle against Sauron. It was awesome!

High Elf Intro - Second Age

And Elrond's house! Oh my! It looked amazing compared to the version we are familiar with, and that was pretty good to start with.

Tham Send in Elrond's Last Homely House

Taurileth in Tham Send

I'm so glad we get the beautiful armour to keep. I love how you get sent to Celondim in Ered Luin with Elrond's sons - and a pile of books to catch up on a couple thousand years of history that occurred while you were sleeping! It's hard to imagine what that would be like. I've decided to make her a scholar as a result. Imagine poking around ruins and remembering them as beautiful buildings like it was yesterday - maybe she'll find "ancient" artifacts that were created by her friends or family, or even by her!

I almost wish I had used the character boost on her, but from reading the Patch Notes, it looks like there are quite a few quests that have minor variations for High Elves, and it might be fun to experience those.

Aria of the Valar

When I logged in after the expansion launched, I was missing my Aria of the Valar package. There was an announcement that it was a known issue, and would be fixed soon. I transferred crafting materials to my bank to make room in my bags for Mordor stuff, and my bank was nearly full, so I bought some more shared storage, and then my Aria of the Valar Package arrived. So I used the Aria of the Valar character boost to take my level 18 Captain to level 105 so she could head into Mordor. I'll have to level her crafting skills later.

It included (all character-bound):

• Aria of the Valar (instantly boosts character to level 105 and transports you to Camp of the Host in The Wastes so you can pick up the Epic Quest Volume IV, Book 8 from Aragorn that leads you into Mordor; you also get 12 tiers of each virtue, trait points, promotion points, over 300 marks, a Westemnet Iron Coin, at least 10 LOTRO points from auto-completed deeds, an Anórien lootbox and a sturdy key).
• Aria of the Valar Armour Pack (contains a full set of item level 294 armour and jewellery appropriate for your class, but no pocket item).
• Aria of the Valar Weapon Pack (contains a item level 294 weapon set appropriate for your class (e.g. a sword and shield), plus 3 Unidentified Third Age Legendary Item Boxes so you can choose a weapon, a class item and a war-steed bridle).
• Aria of the Valar Item Pack (contains 25 Dale-men's Crams, 25 Rejuvenation Potions, 25 Mithril Coins, Map to Eastfold - Aldburg, Map to the Sutcrofts - Snowbourne, an Anfalas Star-lit Crystal, Trait: Riding Characteristic (gain riding skill), Steed of the Citadel and war-steed appearances). 
• 3 Giant Piles of Silver Scraps (worth 5 gold 400 silver).
• 5 Tomes of Extraordinary Experience (XP boosters).
• Map to Rivendell.
• War-steed.
• Trait: Mounted Combat (can use war-steeds).
• Trait: Legendary items (can use legendary items).

Camp of the Host, The Wastes

Steed of the Citadel

Captain boosted to level 105 wearing equipment from Aria of the Valar Package

July: Month of the Hunter

This month is all about hunters in Middle Earth for me: I'm currently levelling three hunters through various parts of the game and really enjoying the class. I usually play blue spec because I like the mobility, but I've been having fun trying out the yellow spec traps and decoy lately too.

Level 100 Robinya (VIP) - West/Central Gondor

Robinya doesn't really like fighting, she likes collecting artifacts. Fortunately, her quests in West Gondor recently took her to Edhellond where there were corsairs running around and nearly trampling priceless old elven artifacts amongst the ruins, so she had no compunction about putting an end to them when necessary.

Edhellond

Then she went to Dol Amroth and met up with Jajax again, who told her about the corsairs down on the coast at Hashadîr, so she went to their camp and found some crates of artifacts and she wasn't going to let any corsair slavers or pillagers stand in her way of returning them to the library in Dol Amroth for further study. Then Jajax got kidnapped so she had to go rescue him from Abedec's Watch, and they had been stealing artifacts too, so she reclaimed them as well.

Robinya reached level 100 in Ethring, Ringló Vale in Central Gondor. It would be nice to get her to level 105 before the Mordor expansion launches, but I don't think I have enough time.

Mordor Expansion

I watched some streams of people playing the Mordor beta and saw that there is still a lot missing, placeholder text for quests, character appearances looking worse than before (fat faces with less expression, flat chests and big bellies), class skills needing balancing or fixing etc. so I figured the expansion was a still a little ways off - this is Mordor: I hope it will be really polished. Then we see the announcement for preorders and in the fine print it mentions the release date at the end of this month - July 31st. The fine print! <shakes head in disbelief> I love LOTRO but sometimes I despair over how the game is run.

For most MMOs, expansion release dates is a big deal and they usually give you a fair bit of notice to build hype and let people prepare for it. When I used to play WoW, I would arrange to take my holidays during the first week of a new expansion so I could play it non-stop and enjoy all the new content without interruptions (oh server crashes or major bugs were inconvenient but also bonds players who were there together as they commiserate and help each other on voice chat, in-game chat or forums).

This will be the first expansion in LOTRO since I joined, and I'd love to dedicate several days to it, but I won't even be there when the gates of Mordor open because I've already made other plans - visiting my family in New Zealand. Normally I would hope expansions launch on time and be complete (unlike Rift's latest expansion which was missing most of the advertised expansion content), but this time I hope the Mordor launch is delayed, for both selfish reasons and so they can make it the best it can be.

Level 35 Mystrandos (F2P) - Evendim

Evendim

My free-to-play hunter Mystrandos is questing through Evendim, working on the Epic questline and saving up LOTRO points to unlock Angmar next.

I don't really enjoy the quests in Northcotton Farm - so much traipsing back and forth - but at least she got quite a bit of XP from it. She completed some Shire deeds by questing around Oatbarton and the Glassblower's Camp near Dwaling, so those LOTRO points will help. Now she's based at Tinnudir and I'm looking forward to visiting the ruins throughout Parth Aduial.

Level 1-20 Hunter

I actually levelled a hunter from 1-20 at the start of the month so that I could create a little kin for crafting alts and invite myself into it with two accounts and two instances of the game open at the same time. However, I was already level 10 before it hit me that I should have screen-shotted and documented her levelling for the Introducing X Class guides. Oops. Opportunity missed. Ah well, I'll just make another hunter and take notes this time. Never can have too many hunters right?